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Friday, 10 November 2017

CREATIVE FUSE: Cake 13 Future Fashion

For those of you that follow me on instagram may have seen I was at the Northern Design Centre in Gateshead yesterday. I was there for the Creative Fuse Cake 13 Event. Every month, Creative Fuse host a Cake event (which of course includes coffee & cake), which covers a different topic each time. This time, the focus of the event and the speakers brought together was the future on the fashion and creative industry.

As you can see from our content and designs, we are inspired a lot by science and so this was right up our street! The guest speakers were Jen Barrett from This Is Creative Enterprice (TICE), Sally Smallwood founder of clothing brand Wreckreation and Raymond Oliver who is a chemical engineer and Professor of Interactive Materials at Northumbria University.

Jen from TICE spoke about how education can be evolved from the industries we now have to educating the youth as to what jobs may exist in the future when they are ready to into the working world. She was highlighting the important of ambient marketing and the fact that 70% of millennials would rather spend their money on an experience rather than a product. She also mentioned that with every trend the industries show, there is counter trends which are in turn a side effect of the original trend. With the tech fuelled lives we live lead now, we may try to resist and begin to lean to more heritage brands and things that encapsulate more tactile techniques and processes.

Jen also highlighted the importance of cross collaboration for the future of the creative industry. Bringing events and experiences together and brands collaborating more is something we can be educating today's youngsters about.

Sally was next up and she introduced her brand Wreckreation. Her brand creates custom built clothing for self proclaimed warriors. She strives to empower people through her designs and is inspired a lot by motor cross which can be seen through her colour ways, but she's also inspired hugely by philosophy and the way humans think. Her early sketches show the the muscle build up of the human form which was then translated into trouser panels.

She has created the 'Super Charger' jeans which are panelled jeans that are lined with LED strips. The light reflects electrical impulses that we all carry inside our brains. She then explained that we all have this, so we have to power to shine outwardly and the Super Charger jeans were born. She collaborated with CPI to help make this design a reality!

The last speaker, Raymond Oliver is a very inspiring man and mind. His background in chemical engineering is now fuelling his position at Northumbria University with a focus group of students he is working with. He spoke about fashion through the ages and in his opinion, fashion has no past or future but is relative to the present time. Neither is more advanced, as again, its relative to the time it was designed and produced. Interesting concept, right?! Raymond also thinks there shouldn't be a difference between the arts and science and instead should be working and collaborating more. We couldn't agree more!

He then went on to explain how, with the research in chemical engineering, it will be possible to create fabrics which react similarly to mad made fibres like elastic but with natural molecules from the sea etc. And apparently, sugar will also play a big role in this sustainability journey. This will allow the industry to create fabrics which can be reused and recycled. With today's culture of throw away fashion (playstation generation of tinder and fast food), we think this is much needed and so beneficial to the environment!

After the talk, it was on to the cake part of the cake event. Of course, we obliged in this part (rude not to, right.) This gave us a chance to have a really good look around at the exhibition and network with some lovely people.

We have known about Moth Studios for some time now and always see their workshop events on facebook, but never had the pleasure of seeing Sharene's work up close. But yesterday that changed! Gorgeous mix of colours, textures and attention to detail.

It's great to see local designers doing their own thing and setting the path for others to follow! Moth Studio's is very unique and offers classes which I haven't seen anywhere else in the north east.